The novel begins with the death of George Poole's father and the
discovery of a photograph showing George as a toddler with an unknown twin
sister. This sparks a midlife crisis for George, who, dissatisfied with
his current job and separated from his wife, becomes obsessed with finding
his sister. He learns that his family, then very poor, gave his sister
Rosa up to an obscure religious order with strange connections to his
family - the Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins. Joining him in
this search is a former school friend, Peter McLachlan, a science nerd who
appears to have wandered in from a different Baxter novel. Peter is
involved with an online SETI group and prone to paranoid speculations on
why so much of the universe is composed of dark matter. Together, they
find out that the Order was interested in George's sister because his
family are descended from the founder of the order, Regina, who lived in
Britain during the start of the fall of Rome, when the empire lost its
toehold on that island.

The first-person narrative of George's investigations alternates
with the story of Regina growing up a spoiled daughter of a wealthy Roman
family in Britain, whose status becomes more and more impoverished as the
novel goes on until she and the family of her former slave have to teach
themselves farming and all the skills necessary for survival. Baxter does
an excellent job with her character, undoubtedly the most developed in the
novel, as she moves from spoiled daughter, to rebellious adolescent, to
leader of her people, to queen (to war leader Artorius of Caml fort), to cold and calculating religious leader. Baxter paints a fascinating picture of what life was like after the fall of civilization, with Regina knowing that a better life exists and thinking of that as normal with the current conditions something to be survived until normality returns. (There are some wonderful passages
comparing the wonders of civilization with the pitiful products her town's
workshops can do.) And ultimately, Regina is willing to do whatever it takes for
the survival of her family's bloodline, even pimp her daughter's body in
exchange for passage to Rome.

Once in Rome she finds her own mother, who had become part of the remnants of the pre-Christian Vestal Virgins, and through sheer force of will and instinct, forges them into a religious order based on three rules: "Sisters matter more than daughters" (because only a few are allowed to breed so that the whole group can be one family of sisters rather than separate groups of family lines), the Orwellian "Ignorance is strength" (because the structures of the group allow it to survive), and "Listen to your sisters" (so that peer pressure keeps everyone in line.)

Finally, halfway through the book, a third plotline evolves. Rosa, who has become influential in the Order, chooses 14-year-old Lucia, to become one of the mothers. This ultimately leads to Lucia meeting an American in Rome and choosing to run away from the order. Naturally, they encounter George and Peter and reveal some of the biological secrets of the order that leads Peter to suspect that the Order has evolved into a whole new species. I had the most trouble with this plotline. In many ways Lucia behaves more like a stranger to the Order than someone who had grown up there. For instance, she is surprised that her baby only takes three months to gestate since she saw on the Internet
that it normally takes nine. And if the smell, warmth, and comfort of the
Hive is so seductive that even George is tempted to join, why is she so
rebellious? Also, neither Lucia nor Rosa act like drones. It is hard to
see how a system that produces a Lucia could remain as stable as the one
described here. As to the science, I find it very hard to believe that
evolution works as quickly as it does in this novel (and along seemingly
Lamarkian lines at that) to cause groups to diverge especially since the
hive uses males from outside and outsiders like George's sister join the
hive so it is not completely isolated.

Science aside, I found this an interesting novel of the "secret history" variety. Putting the Hive in Rome, the center of much of history, rather than a hidden backwater, was an interesting choice of Baxter's that worked to provide contrast - the center of western civilization hiding an alternative civilization beneath it. The Hive itself is dedicated to survival. It was created out of Regina's sense that it was easy for civilization to fall so it evolved into a system independent of civilization and even of the individual humans that comprise it.

The back of the book describes it as first of a series, Destiny's
Children. But it is hard to see where this plot line could go as the Hive, at least as shown in this book, is essentially a dead-end for humanity that has no drive for expansion (never spreading beyond Rome in 2000 years) nor
any goal beyond survival. I suspect that the next book will not simply
pick up where this one ended but will instead present a different course of
evolution for mankind.

Readers who have avoided books by Stephen Baxter because of the stereotype that Science Fiction written by scientists have better science than fiction should certainly give Coalescent a try. This might also be a good book to give fans of historical or even mainstream fiction a taste of science fictional speculation.

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